1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a baby pacifier, and more specifically to a pacifier that incorporates a locator device activated by a remote transmitter to find the pacifier when misplaced by the baby. The locator device includes a receiver circuit that selectively includes sound and or illumination elements.
2. Description of Prior Art
In general pacifiers have been traditionally comprised of a nipple, a mouth guard, and a handle. The designs for pacifiers have been developed to meet the needs of various infants using such variations as orthopedically designed nipples, pleasing designs to look at, temperature sensing devices and soothing sounds as baby suckles on the pacifier. However, few designs have successfully incorporated the needs of the caretaker as well as those of the infant.
One such design has attempted to meet some of the caretakers and needs and that is an illuminated pacifier, U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,902 to Swartz (1988). This pacifier was specifically designed to locate the pacifier if lost in the crib bedding at night. It seemed to do a better job than some other illuminating pacifiers, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,848 to Kanali (1996) of U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,924 to Jekel (1989) which were simply made of luminescent material. One pacifier came closer, U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,719 which comprises a night light system with detachable glow in the dark pacifiers. Never-the-less, the pacifiers were still difficult to find because the luminescent quality will inevitably wear off usually by the time you start to look for it.
The present invention surpasses these limitations and broadens the usefulness of a locator device in the pacifier. It incorporates the use of sound as well as light to simplify and speed up the often frustrating process of pacifier searching.